Harris’ interview scandal with ‘60 Minutes’ much bigger than you think

OPINION:

“The biggest scandal in election history.”

That’s what former President Donald Trump called the dubious editing of a Kamala Harris interview aired on CBS’ “60 Minutes.”

While Mr. Trump is no doubt once again straining the limits of hyperbole, what CBS did with that interview on “60 Minutes” — once one of the most respected shows on television — was quite significant. In one fell swoop, it unmasked the media as willing to do anything to support their chosen candidate — and worse, showed that for the legacy media (which is dying fast and will soon disappear altogether), the ends really do justify the means.

Here’s what happened. On Oct. 6, CBS’s “Face The Nation” posted a clip on X previewing the interview with Ms. Harris by correspondent Bill Whitaker. In the promo, the vice president said this about the turmoil in the Middle East: “Well, Bill [long pause], the work that we have done has resulted in a number of, uh, movements in that region by Israel that were very much prompted by or a result of, uh, many things, including our advocacy for what needs to happen in the region.”

When the real interview aired the next night, that’s not what Ms. Harris said. Instead, she actually made sense in answering the same question: “We are not going to stop pursuing what is necessary for the United States to be clear about where we stand on the need for this war to end.”

Mr. Trump and his minions immediately cried foul. CBS had no idea what to say. A week passed, then another, before the network even tried to explain the discrepancy.

CBS finally did offer an explanation this week: “60 Minutes gave an excerpt of our interview to Face the Nation that used a longer section of her answer than that on 60 Minutes,” the network said. “Same question. Same answer. But a different portion of the response.

“When we edit any interview, whether a politician, an athlete, or movie star, we strive to be clear, accurate and on point. The portion of her answer on 60 Minutes was more succinct, which allows time for other subjects in a wide ranging 21-minute-long segment,” CBS added.

That took two weeks to devise? 

The Trump campaign pounced.

“60 Minutes just admitted to doing exactly what President Trump accused them of doing,” campaign spokesman Karoline Leavitt said in a statement. “They edited in a different response — from another part of her answer — to make Kamala Harris sound less incoherent than she really was.

“Their statement is not a denial, it is an admission that they did exactly what they were accused of,” Ms. Leavitt added. “This is another reminder of how hopelessly biased 60 Minutes is, and how correct President Trump was to decline their invitation to be subjected to their fake news hackery.”

Mr. Trump, as adept at cutting to the chase as he is at spinning hyperbole, said: “It’s so bad that the people at CBS say ‘We’re going to do a little editing.’ … They take the whole ridiculous answer out, and it was a long answer and replace it with a much shorter answer that you had to do with a totally different subject, which also didn’t make sense, but it wasn’t as incompetent.”

CBS has never released the full unedited interview and said this week that it has no plans to do so.

“Why did 60 Minutes choose not to air Kamala’s full word salad, and what else did they choose not to air?’ Ms. Leavitt said. “The American people deserve the full, unedited transcript from Kamala’s sit-down interview. We call upon 60 Minutes and CBS to release it. What do they, and Kamala, have to hide?”

Um, a lot.

Sadly, this is now the state of American journalism: morally bankrupt and unconcerned with reality. A network news organization saw a presidential candidate give a completely unintelligible answer to an important foreign policy question, so they — changed the answer?

Look, I’ve been doing this for a million years, and I agree with so many of you who email me regularly to say journalism is going right down the tubes. I wish I could say it isn’t, but it is. 

• Joseph Curl covered the White House and politics for a decade for The Washington Times. He can be reached at josephcurl@gmail.com and on X @josephcurl.